Thursday, January 24, 2008

Just before he stopped blogging and deleted his archives, John Mayer posted a one line review of MacBook Air which nails the product's positioning:

"Macbook Air... Yes, it really is as cool as it looks. Lean, mean lifestyle workstation..."

(As of this writing, there's a clone of Mayer's site still available on honeyee.com)

When I lived in L.A. I was shocked that for somepeople "working on my tan" is considered a career. But that career is just a by-water of the larger industry, "working on my lifestyle."

By calling it a lifestyle workstation, Mayer captures the essence of MacBook Air. It's executive bling. It's what every consultant would like to whip out at a client meeting, what every status junkie would like to brandish at a conference or executive airport lounge. So what, if features and functionality are compromised to squeeze it into a lust object? "You can't be too rich or too thin." (Google tells me that might have been said by the Duchess of Windsor, but it isn't sure.) Now that there are millions and millions of iPhones out there, you need something to turn heads.

Mickeleh's Take: I bought a New Beetle the first week they went on sale in 1998. It was fun to take a hot and rare product out in public. I'm still driving it and somehow it's not drawing quite the same crowds. But I have my memories. Do I really have to purchase another dose of coolness? I'm cool enough. I'd have thought Mayer was too. Maybe that MacBook post triggered a shock of sanity and he got out of the blogging business and back to work.

Yup. I had my Air on its first long flight today, from Denver to Boston. Wouldn't have bothered trying to use the MacBook Pro on the little tray, but the Air was just right and made me happy for a couple of hours till the battery died. (I'd worked it pretty hard at DIA terminal.) I took it to an arts commission meeting a couple of weeks ago, shamelessly enjoying the people admiring it, wanting to touch it. It's another bit of design genius by Apple.

We should be careful and discriminating in all the par‘nesis we give. We should be signally careful in giving guidance that we would not dream up of following ourselves. Most of all, we ought to escape giving advisor which we don't tag along when it damages those who woo assume us at our word.